How GOOP is loving consciously

Gwyneth Paltrow opens this week’s GOOP by declaring that “I have never been much of a self-help person”.

Really?

Because it feels like there’s a LOT of self-help on her site…

Maybe I can’t read.

Gwyneth has recently read Conscious Loving. It was recommended to her by “basically the wisest person I have ever met”, so take your pick because she’s met EVERYONE, and she now, as a result of the Conscious Loving, knows how to take responsibility for “the difficulties” in her relationships.

Curiously, for the last few months, there has been nothing but solid reports on the state of Gwyneth’s relationship with her husband, after much speculation that a split was imminent. Chris Martin was even seen, happily, at the Vanity Fair party after the Oscars, arriving to join his wife. He still scurries away like a bitch on occasion but by and large, they have moved into a strong phase.

Here’s a section of today’s newsletter that stood out to me in particular:

Q: How can a couple recover from infidelity?

A:1 ) "Allow yourself to feel all the emotions that come up. These are usually anger, sadness and fear. That includes feeling all the emotions and sharing those as authentically as possible over time." 2 ) "Each person should take healthy responsibility for the events that have taken place. Both people need to ask themselves, 'Hmmm, why was it inevitable that this situation occurred in my life at this particular time?' Asking a powerful question like that takes you out of thinking of yourself as a victim." 3 ) "Talk through what happened, listen generously to each other and focus on what can be learned. This way, partners can actually create a stronger relationship than before. Blame and withholding after infidelity, on the other hand, make it very difficult to recover." 4 ) "Partners then can commit to each other to resolve the issue and create a new relationship based on what they really want."

Would you ever be able to take “healthy responsibility” for someone cheating on you? Does it change the way you feel about GP now that you know she may be someone who could take “healthy responsibility” for being cheated on?

I don’t think it’s fair...but it certainly works to the hater’s advantage: “God, she’s so f-cking pretentious, who could blame him for cheating on her!?”

This is never something I could be comfortable with. Even as a gossip columnist.

There’s a blog I’ve recently become obsessed with. It’s the story of a woman who is blogging through her husband’s infidelity from the moment she caught him to the confession and on, and on. I don’t agree with all of her inclinations. But it’s the tangible to GOOP’s abstract, depending on your preference. Click here to read it from the first entry onwards.

Or you could go with my ma, the Chinese Squawking Chicken who said something super ominous to me the other day after giving us our feng shui readings for the year. She said that if either one of us were to step out on our marriage, Jacek and I, we would ruin our lives forever. Like mega doom. Like we would never recover, personally, professionally, financially; that our fortunes have been written so that finding happiness afterwards would be impossible. It was tantamount to saying if you cheat, you should just kill yourself because there won’t be anything worth surviving for. So, you know, there’s always that as a deterrent.

Here’s Gwyneth last night in Paris at the Louis Vuitton event, with Dianna Agron, in short pants that look awesome on her. For you Twi-Hards out there, I’m also told she had a moment with Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson. Apparently they were seen laughing and toasting something.